This file provides information for replicating the results from: Jonathan P. Kastellec, Andrew Gelman and Jamie Chandler. 2008. "Predicting and Dissecting the Seats-Votes Curve in the 2006 U.S. House Election PS: Political Science &
Politics. 41(1):139-145.

DATA

We used three datasets in the paper: a district-level dataset containing
information on every election in each House election from 1946 to 2004;
an aggregate-level dataset containing information on the total number of
votes and seats gained by each party in the same elections; and a
dataset containing information on each district that we used to make
predictions for the 2006 election.

a) Individual House Races Data, 1946-2004

The dataset "jacobson_data.dta", which was given to us by Gary Jacobson, contains various information on every House race from 1946-2004, such as the vote share of the Democratic candidate and incumbency status; complete coding information is available in "Jacobson_coding.DOC" We
modified and recoded this data using this Stata do-file: "all_years_data_recoding.do" The updated dataset is "House_1946_2004_updated.dta"; coding information for this is available
at "1946-2004_coding_updated.DOC"


b) Aggregate House Data, 1946-2004_

The dataset "House2006/House_1946-2006_aggregate.dta", 
which was compiled based on data available from the Clerk of the House --- 
http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/index.html --- contains
aggregate information (in terms of seats and votes) for every House
election from 1946-2004. Coding information is available in "1946-2004_aggregate_coding.DOC"

c)  Individual House Race Data for Predicting 2006

The dataset "2006_house_data.dta" contains information about the 2006
election, including incumbency status lagged vote leading up to the election,
along with information about the winner and vote margins in the 2006 election.
Data on 2004 vote shares and incumbency status was based on Jacobson’s data.
Data on incumbency status and retirements was taken from various news sources
in the months leading up to the election (see paper for references). And the
2006 election results were supplied to us Walt Borges, who gathered the
official certified results of every state, which we then confirmed
independently. Coding information is available here at "House2006/2006_coding.DOC"

STATISTICAL CODE

All statistical analysis that appears in the paper was conducted using
R. Complete, annotated code is available in "house_2006_script_web.R" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

